And you thought I was slacking...

I know it's been quite a while since my last blog post. But rest assured, we haven't just been resting up here in Ithaca. In fact, there hasn't been much rest at all!

In between the daily life (you know, work, cooking, etc), and planning to host a major party for 250 people next weekend, we've managed to turn this:



Into this:




Sadly, at least on my computer screen, you can't tell the magnitude of the change from construction worker orange to rich, chocolate brown.


One thing you can see is the transformation of the wall sconces:


















After all of the manual labor we've done so far, it was fun to do a less intense home related project today...shopping! I have learned that one key to successful purchasing is to clearly define what I'm looking for prior to the shopping trip. (This is true in all cases except for the major purchase of this house itself, in which we met maybe 1 of our 5 key criteria - but couldn't be happier!) So, I embarked upon a search for a rug that was approximately 30" by 80", had a brown and green pattern, didn't look too much like an Oriental rug, was dark enough in color to handle shoe traffic.

Enter stage left:



(Excuse the less-than-great picture)

Aside from protecting our now-gorgeous floors, the new rug unifies the living room and den. I hope to create a little home entrance area.
For those of you who are not yet familiar with our house lay-out, the den is immediately to your right as you come in the front door. I grew up in a house with a foyer, so it's a bit of an adjustment to come in the front door and *bam* you're in the living room. Down the line, we'll have coat hooks, etc to make this a more useful entranceway.

For the short-term, we have this weekend to turn the den into a temporary master bedroom. This involves purchasing a bed (I vetoed Justin's half-joking "let's share my twin bed" suggestion), hanging blinds/curtains, and finishing the last remaining renovation tasks (painting the baseboards and installing the quarter rounds where the floor meets the walls).

We're pretty proud of our first room and the checks on the to-do list that got us here!



Hopefully next time I can provide a more step-by-step view of our progress! I suspect that once I have my own working computer (and don't have to mooch off Justin's when he's not doing homework), I can increase my blog presence. In fact, I have dreams of a daily lunch-break post (don't get too attached to the idea yet!) The next few weeks may be a little slow though - the wedding's right around the corner!


(That's all that's left of Justin's 365-day countdown chain I made him last year for our negative one year anniversary). Single digit countdown starts tomorrow!